The Great MacGuffin: A LitRPG Adventure (Beta Tester Book 1)

by Rachel Ford

  “Well, there was a problem with the installation module. Someone checked in a piece of code they hadn’t thoroughly tested. You know how it is.”

  Jack nodded. He did. This was his world too, in a way. He might not be one of the developers who reached the lofty heights of Marshfield Studio, but at its core, all programming was the same. So he was more forgiving than most, since he knew how easy it was to overlook something in the rush to get a fix out.

  Then again, Jack worked on fast food delivery apps and dating sites and rating sites. The worst that was going to happen if Jack messed a patch up was someone would wind up with a few stars too many or too few. These guys were working on something that plugged into his brain. So the worst that would happen if they screwed up? Cerebellum toast.

  His cerebellum.

  Avery seemed to be waiting for a response, but he went on anyway when it didn’t come. “Anyway, it didn’t finish installing.”

  “I know. They uninstalled it, though.”

  “Ah, that’s the kicker. The same bug that kept it from completing the installation is keeping it from completing the uninstallation.”

  Jack blinked, working through the implications. “So…if you can’t put it on, and you can’t take it off…how do I get out of here?”

  His tone had been rising a little out of sheer panic, but Avery spoke in placating tones. “Don’t worry, Jack. We got you.”

  He breathed a sigh of relief. “So you do know how to get me out of here?”

  “We do.”

  “Thank God. Well, let’s get going. Get me out of here.”

  “We’re not there yet.”

  Jack blinked. “What?”

  “We know what’s wrong. We know what we need to do to fix it. But – it’s going to take a little while.”

  He groaned. “No, no, no.”

  “I know this is stressful. I understand, this isn’t what you were anticipating. But I want you to know, we’re in this with you. You’re part of our Marshfield Studio family, Jack. We’re not resting until we can get you out of there. We’ve got people on it around the clock.”

  He groaned again. “How long until I can go home?”

  “We don’t have an ETA for the next patch drop yet, but –”

  “Wait, did you say ‘the next patch?’”

  “Yes. We need to push a patch to fix what this one broke.”

  Jack plunked down on the ground, groaning. “I’m going to die.”

  It took a little while to get Jack entirely rational again. It took a few pep talks from the Shakespeare of his era, and a gentle reminder that he was still being paid by the hour. “So, since we can’t really do anything else in the meantime, we thought it might help take your mind off matters to get back in the game. Since we are paying you to test, specifically.”

  Jack moped for a good, long time. He moped until his stomach growled with hunger. “I’m starving, guys.”

  “Your character needs to eat,” Richard told him.

  “How the heck can I eat when the game’s paused? I mean, I don’t even have any money.”

  “Well, we can fix that, Jack,” Avery said. “Normally, I wouldn’t sanction this, lest it skew testing results. But in light of the circumstances…Richard, why don’t you drop five hundred gold in Jack’s inventory?”

  “You got it, boss man.”

  Jack felt his wealth increase, and he knew he had four hundred and fifty-eight gold pieces in his pocket – five hundred gold, minus what he owed Migli. It struck him that a magical purse was a definite blessing. Even as very small coins, five hundred of them would be pretty heavy.

  Migli moved again, so unexpectedly that Jack jumped. “Hey dude, it’s me, Richard.”

  “Oh geez, you scared the snot out of me.”

  “Sorry bro. Anyway, I’ll be here until Jordan gets in.”

  “Sounds good. I like you better anyway. Jordan’s a pain in my posterior.”

  “Not bad on the eyes though, am I right?”

  Jack blinked at the other man’s tones. He hadn’t guessed Richard was gay. Suddenly, he remembered his own words of a moment before, and he wondered if the bit about liking him could be misinterpreted.

  He didn’t know, but he figured he should probably clear the air just in case. He’d had no actual indications that Richard liked him, but, on the other hand, it didn’t seem beyond the pale. Not that he’d be the one to point it out, but Jack was tall and good looking, with above average intelligence. Significantly above average. And he’d beat out millions of other applicants to win this job. He could see how a young, awkward intern might find his charms too compelling to ignore.

  So, instead of admitting he’d never even seen Jordan in real life, he decided to let the kid down gently. “Oh. Uh, I wouldn’t know. That’s not really…I mean, I got nothing against that. I don’t mean to imply that I do. But just, I don’t swing that way, you know?”

  “Really?” Richard seemed so surprised that Jack was glad he’d spoken up when he did. Nineteen was already a rough age when you were a gangly kid with bad skin. Unrequited admiration only made it worse.

  He must have acted in time, though, because the young man recovered quickly. “Well, no worries. I mean, I called dibs anyway. Although, if we’re being real, Jordan’s way out of both of our leagues.” He laughed, then added apologetically, “No offense, of course.”

  Jack rolled his eyes and tried to steer the conversation back on track. “So you’re my new Migli?”

  “Right. Call me any time you need me.”

  “Okay. Well, first up, I need you to unpause the game. And secondly, I need you to take this blessed profanity filter off.”

  “I can do the first. But sorry, bro. I can’t mess with the filter.”

  “Come on. I am trapped in a game. At least let me swear.”

  “Sorry. I could lose my job if I did that.”

  “He would,” Avery put in. “I’m sorry, Jack, but these rules were put in place after a lot of careful consideration.”

  “Like, he means months of debate.”

  “Committee meetings. But it’s for the benefit of our Marshfield Studio family. I’m sure you understand.”

  Jack didn’t, but he didn’t argue either. Something about being in Shakespeare’s digital presence curbed his appetite for argument. So he told Richard to start the game.

  And then, just like that, he was back in Dragon’s Run. The frozen mother resumed scolding her errant boy, and the boy kept on smirking like he didn’t regret a second of whatever he’d done. The horses clattered on their way, and Blake Stoutheart went on extolling the virtues of the finest silk in the kingdom.

  Jack looked around for somewhere to eat. Even if it was open already, he didn’t want to go back to the tavern. Not after his adventure there last night.

  Migli, meanwhile, watched him for a moment. Then he said, “We should probably grab some supplies before we head out. We don’t want to venture off into those woods unprepared.”

  “Right. Food. Where will I find food, Migli?”

  “We could try the tavern, Sir Knight.”

  Jack groaned. “Anywhere else?”

  “Yonder shopkeeps may have what thou seekest.”

  Jack headed to Blake, who was still trying to sell him silk. “Come on. Do I look like a silks guy?”

  “The Erusian blue would be a fine match with your hair and eyes.”

  He paused to consider. It wasn’t exactly the rugged look he was going for. But, the color did look like a good fit with his dark hair. And ma always says blue brings the color of my eyes out. He shook his head. These weren’t his real eyes, and he didn’t need silk. “I need food.”

  “Ah, I have the finest food stuffs in the seven kingdoms.”

  “You and every other merchant. Come on, show me what you have.”

  The other man’s consumables inventory contained a few bottles of various ales – which he stayed well away from – and a large selection of cooking ingredients. Other than a solit
ary apple pie, there wasn’t a single bit of prepared food though. “I need cooked food.”

  “You can cook food at any hearth,” Blake told him.

  Jack sighed. “Fine. I’ll take the rabbit legs, the beef, the carrots, and…what the heck, the leeks too. Oh, and the apple pie.”

  He lost a ghastly sixty-eight gold pieces and gained a bunch of raw meat. He considered for a moment buying the salt pouch but couldn’t justify forking over fifteen extra gold pieces. Then he remembered Migli’s haranguing about supplies, so he asked, “What kind of weapons and armor do you have, Blake?”

  The merchant’s shelves were fairly lean on this front. He could have got a full set of plate armor for fifteen hundred gold. He didn’t have fifteen hundred gold, and it was heavy armor anyway. Heavy armor wasn’t his style. He liked the flexibility and weightlessness of light armor.

  So he settled for the only other item available: drab brown leather armor. That cost him one hundred pieces of gold, and a vial of black dye added another twenty-five onto the price.

  Admittedly, it wasn’t the highest priority at the moment, but the armor was the ugliest thing he’d seen so far. The design was bland and shapeless, and the color was that of warm puppy turds. He couldn’t fix the design, but he could enhance the color.

  “Seek out smiths around the realm,” Blake told him, “and they’ll be able to improve your weapons and armor.”

  Jack filed that away for future referenced and applied the dye. The leather changed to a night-sky black, and he smiled. “That almost looks bad-buns.”

  He cringed as he heard the words leave his mouth. But before he left Blake’s shop, he checked what the other man had for healing supplies. He had elixirs of healing and elixirs of magicka. Jack had not learned any magic spells yet, so he hadn’t drained any of his magicka. But he grabbed two of each kind of potion. If he knew anything about videogames – and, he did – he figured he’d learn how to cast spells pretty soon. But magicka was the fuel that powered spells. So once he started using magic, he’d need to be able to restore his magicka. This potion, Blake told him, would restore his entire magicka meter, just like the health potions would restore all lost hit points.

  When all was said and done, he only had one hundred and sixty-five pieces of gold left to his name. But he had supplies and food, and an eagerness to hit the road.

  Chapter Seven

  First, though, he stopped at a hearth. Blake’s hearth, in point of fact. He made a rabbit stew and a roast, and stuffed them into the pocket that held his inventory. Damn, I wish that was real. Considering how easy such a pocket, where everything became weightless and nothing ever spoiled, would make life, he grabbed the apple pie and headed out.

  “You want any, Migli?”

  “I thank thee, good sir knight, but I have already dined.”

  It was just as well. Jack felt positively famished, and the pie tasted divine. “That Blake’s wife is a heck of a cook.”

  Migli said nothing.

  Jack finished his pie. The sun was high in the sky. They’d left just after the noon hour, and it was about one o’clock now. “So tell me, Migli, what kind of things live in these woods?” He hadn’t missed the dwarf’s foreshadowing the night before, or multiple hints today. Whatever monsters the evil geniuses at Marshfield Studio had dreamed up, they were going to face them sooner rather than later.

  “Dark things,” the dwarf said. “Twisted things. Terrible things.”

  Jack rolled his eyes. “How far do we have to go until we’re out of the woods?”

  “Many leagues yet.”

  “Many as in hundreds? Or many as in more than two?”

  Migli didn’t answer. Instead, he started humming one of the songs he’d sang the day before, some piece about dragon gold and winters cold.

  Jack found himself singing along.

  Sons laid deep,

  While mothers weep.

  Homes and meadows burn

  Oceans roil and churn.

  The beast comes nigh,

  Soon we will die.

  He frowned. “You’re not a happy people, are you, Migli?”

  “It is a song of one of my forefathers,” the dwarf said. “The siege of the gilded hall. When the fell beast arose from the depths to drive out my ancestors, and lay claim to their gold.”

  He knew it was all fake, but the dwarf sounded so genuinely affected that he couldn’t help but feel some contriteness at his flippant words. “That stinks, man. Sounds like you lost a lot of people.”

  “The entire settlement. And so much gold, Sir Knight. More gold than all the wealth of all the realms of men.”

  “An entire settlement?” Jack whistled. “Holy crap. That’s awful.”

  “Now there are none who know the way to the gilded hall. None but the monster.”

  He nodded, thinking what a forlorn tomb it must now be, forgotten by all but the one who brought ruin there. “That’s rough, dude.”

  “All that treasure, lost forever.”

  Jack frowned at him. “I think we have a difference of priorities, buddy.”

  Migli went on singing, stanza after long stanza about a fire-breathing demon who lived in the darkest depths of the sea and desired gold above all else. He was still singing about lost gold when a noise caught Jack’s attention.

  He threw a glance around. He didn’t hear it anymore. Indeed, he didn’t hear anything at all. The forest had gone still. Way too still. “Uh, Migli? What’s going on?”

  Migli kept singing. “And gold’s fair beauty tarnished…”

  A sound halfway between a squeal and a growl hit his ears. “Migli, listen.”

  “Darkness’s power harnessed.”

  Jack heard it again, and he threw a frantic gaze around them. Then, he froze. Golden eyes stared back at him from a dark patch of foliage. “Mother trucker.” He drew his blade but stood rooted to the spot.

  He wasn’t quite sure what he was looking at. It seemed one part wolf or dog and another swine. It had double tusks protruding from both sides of its face, by a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth. It stood almost as tall as Migli, and nearly as wide too. Its hooves glistened like razors, and an unspeakably evil glint lit its eyes. A long scar ran down the length of its face, white and raised and knobby against its leathery skin.

  He’d played enough videogames to know what he should be doing. He should be killing this monster.

  But he’d never played a videogame where the monster looked this hair-raisingly, bone-chillingly real. He’d never played a videogame where he stared into a snarling mouth full of razor sharp fangs, and could actually smell fresh blood on the creature’s breath. He’d never met a monster that genuinely scared the bejeezus out of him.

  Migli’s voice sounded about two inches away from his ear, low and intense. “Aye, these are some of the demons of which I speak.”

  Jack hadn’t heard the dwarf stop singing. He hadn’t noticed him creeping up beside him. Consequently, hearing it now, he yelped and leaped a good four feet off the ground.

  Videogame physics didn’t quite work the same way real life did, no matter how good the tech. So a normal character jump was enough to propel him over Migli’s head. Which is exactly what he did at the moment: he leaped right over the dwarf. “Mother trucker, are you trying to kill me, Migli?”

  “Susmala,” the dwarf said, nodding sagely. “Pig demons, who cannot step into the light of the sun, or they’ll turn to stone.”

  “Should we…uh…kill it?”

  The dwarf shook his head. “He’s no harm to us now. He can’t leave the shadow of the trees.”

  “Yeah, but the sun’s not going to stay out forever.”

  “Let us make haste. We do not want to be yet in these woods when the sun sets.”

  Jack stayed rooted to the spot. Instinct told him he should kill this pig demon. But the pure hatred in the thing’s eyes chilled the marrow in his digital bones. So he decided to follow Migli’s advice. He’s been here longer than me. He should k
now what he’s talking about.

  They kept on walking. The dwarf seemed done with singing. He kept mostly quiet, now and then offering a foreboding, “Keep your eyes open, Sir Jack. If that thing gets its friends, we don’t want to be caught unawares.”

  Which seemed to Jack’s mind an excellent argument in favor of killing it. But, they’d already crossed that bridge. Or, not crossed it.

  He spent a few minutes trying to figure out which would be the appropriate take on the phrase. He was therefore so lost in pedantry that he didn’t notice the first few bars of ominous music – not until Migli said, “Look ahead.”

  He did and saw a long patch of forest path completely shaded under a thick canopy of foliage.

  “We need to be on our guard. The Susmala can be anywhere.”

  Jack clutched the hilt of his sword. “Lead on, brave dwarf.”

  “Nay, I cede the honor to thee, noble champion.”

  He glared at the blocky bastard. But he remembered that he was being recorded, and that – no matter how real it felt – it was just a videogame. So he swallowed the lump in his throat and crept forward.

  The tempo of the music picked up a little as he reached the shadow. He felt his palms slick with nervous sweat. The trees grew thick here and pressed in on the path. The air felt still and oppressive. He took one step and then another.

  And then he heard the hair-raising squeal/growl. Not one of them, but four or five. As many sets of golden eyes appeared in the darkest depths of the trees around him, on both sides of the path.

  Then, one of them – either the same he’d seen earlier, or one with a remarkably similar scar – locked eyes with him and pawed the ground. A moment later, the beasts charged.

  Jack made a split-second decision.

  He turned tail and ran, like the yellowest bellied coward to ever step foot in the seven realms. He kept on running, too, until he’d cleared the patch of shadow.